My baby's gone and I don't know why

She let out this morning

Like a rusty shot in a hollow sky

Left me without warning

Sooner than the dogs could bark

and faster than the sun rose

Down to the banks in an old mule car

she took a flatboat across the shallow



CHORUS:

Left me in my tears to drown

she left a baby daughter

Now the water's wide and deep and brown

She's crossing muddy waters



Tobacco standing in the fields

be rotten come November

And a bitter heart will not reveal

a spring that love remembers

When that sweet brown girl of mine

her black eyes are ravens

We broke the bread and drank the wine

from a jug that she'd been saving



CHORUS



Baby's crying and the daylight's gone

That big oak tree is groaning

In rush of wind and river of song

I can hear my sweetheart moaning

Crying for her baby child

or crying for her husband

Crying for that river's wild

to take her from her loved ones



CHORUS TWICE